Although soap opera aficionados would seem to be a minority among college students, there are nonetheless thousands of young people around the country who daily put aside their Sartre, Machiavelli and Freud—not to mention such obsolete writers as Fanon and Debray—to watch the moiling passions of middle-class America as portrayed on daytime TV. What is it about these slow-moving melodramas with their elasticized emotions that today's college students find so engrossing?…

[In] recent years the subject matter of daytime TV has changed and become much more relevant to the interests of young viewers. Into the world of frazzled passions and leaden drama, which could grip chiefly the bored housewife …, contemporary issues have been injected. The "generation gap," abortion, obscenity, narcotics and political protest are now commonly discussed and dealt with on the soap operas of TV.

From its inception in January, 1970, "All My Children" has consistently...